The Linux desktop has come a long way. It's a fully usable, stable, and secure operating system that can be used quite easily by the masses. Not too long ago, Sun figured they could do the same by starting Project Indiana, which is supposed to deliver a complete distribution of OpenSolaris in a manner similar to GNU/Linux. After using the latest version for a while, I'm wondering: why?

Linux over allocates RAM. And when it needs RAM, Linux starts to kill processes randomly. This is horrendous, yes? Whereas Solaris doesnt over allocate RAM and lets the processes run till theyve finished. Imagine you have a process running weeks with a calculation and suddenly it gets killed?

Maybe this has something to do with the declining quality of the Linux code? Linux kernel hacker Andrew Morton explains: http://lwn.net/Articles/285088/
"Q: Is it your opinion that the quality of the kernel is in decline? Most developers seem to be pretty sanguine about the overall quality problem. Assuming there's a difference of opinion here, where do you think it comes from? How can we resolve it?

A: I used to think it was in decline, and I think that I might think that it still is. I see so many regressions which we never fix."

Or this thread: http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Active_Merge_Windows
"the [Linux source] tree breaks every day, and it's becoming an extremely non-fun environment to work in. We need to slow down the merging, we need to review things more, we need people to test their [...] changes!"

I think it has something to do with Linux not having stable ABIs? http://linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/09/02/driver_ease.html
"the incompatibility between different stable point versions of the kernel hampers the Driver on Demand concept. You could compile a driver for 2.6.5 and it would probably not work on 2.6.10 if you simply loaded the precompiled binary module; you would need to recompile the driver for each kernel version."

That is a potential source of unstability. Your driver seems to work fine, with your new kernel. But in fact, on rare occasions your new kernel + old driver combo will just explode but it seldoms happens so you never make the connection. (Do you always recompile all your drivers when you get a new kernel?) The result is that Linux is potentially unstable: http://lethargy.org/~jesus/archives/77-Choosing-Solaris-10-over-Lin...

Maybe this has something to do with the declining quality of the Linux code? Linux kernel hacker Andrew Morton explains:

...

Or this thread: http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Active_Merge_Windows
"the [Linux source] tree breaks every day, and it's becoming an extremely non-fun environment to work in. We need to slow down the merging, we need to review things more, we need people to test their [...] changes!"

Kebabbert you're absolutely clueless. In fact it's downright hilarious to read your posts. Every post you make is littered with ancient articles that are no longer relevant to the current state of Linux and quotes taken out of context.

For instance the OOM issue has been fixed for quite a while now. It is no longer relevant. The quotes you use to try to justify Linux code quality being poor is talking about the dev tree not the released kernel. As for drivers it isn't relevant for Linux. The drivers are in-kernel and are fixed by the kernel hackers themselves. The author of the filesystem article you link to at the end is just as clueless as you. He claims that Linux filesystems cannot scale and have poor throughput. He even includes XFS in his criticism! XFS is extremely scalable and high throughput. Claiming otherwise is an obvious sign that you know little about it.

It isn't pathetic - I think you'll see the same things with Redhat enterprise linux, etc.

If you really want free security updates, then you could try nexenta - though I don't have much experience with it.

Really amazing what people can complain about in such an extreme way...

As a *Desktop user*, are you really that worried about needing all of these security updates? The one exception is probably Firefox, and I had no trouble updating it through IPS to the latest version.

Also, from what I've seen, btrfs will give you about the same functionality as ZFS - each fs may have slight performance gains in some areas over the other. I'd like to know how it will wipe the floor with it though

It isn't pathetic - I think you'll see the same things with Redhat enterprise linux, etc.

The match for enterprise linux would be Solaris 10, not OpenSolaris which is according to Sun aimed at developers, students or early adopters.

If you really want free security updates, then you could try nexenta - though I don't have much experience with it.

Yes I could, and I can keep running a supported Linux distro as well. The subject of this article was however more like comparing OpenSoaris to Linux distributions.

Really amazing what people can complain about in such an extreme way...

As a *Desktop user*, are you really that worried about needing all of these security updates?

Yes I am. It's not only about what vulnerabilities already exist. Imagine a flaw in the SunSSH client or a low level library like libjpeg, poppler etc.

The one exception is probably Firefox, and I had no trouble updating it through IPS to the latest version.

Then I wonder how you did that without upgrading the whole system to /dev or buying access to the /support repository.

Also, from what I've seen, btrfs will give you about the same functionality as ZFS - each fs may have slight performance gains in some areas over the other. I'd like to know how it will wipe the floor with it though

IMHO OpenSolaris is technically superior to Linux, the lack of a maintained free release make it an unsuitable choice for their target group.